Archive for May, 2010

I have to say, that even this old cynic was a bit taken aback by how little time it took for a minister of the new government to drop in the shit.

I also laughed like a drain as the excuses were trotted out as they tried to convince us that this was not just another case of another over paid wealthy MP taking the piss, but a, and I quote here “terrible personal and public tragedy”.

Fuck off is my repsonse to that.

Mr Laws (who is a millionaire) claimed up to £950 a month in expenses for five years to rent rooms in two properties owned by lobbyist James Lundie who just happens to be his “partner”, and I dont mean business partner.

Parliamentary rules since 2006 clearly ban MPs from “leasing accommodation from a partner”.

Mr Laws stated that he did not consider himself be in breach of the rules which define partner as ‘one of a couple… who, although not married to each-other or civil partners, are living together and treat each other as spouses’. However he also said “James and I are intensely private people, and we made the decision to keep our relationship private and believed that was our right. Clearly that cannot now remain the case. My motivation throughout has not been to maximise profit but to simply protect our privacy and my wish not to reveal my sexuality.”

OK in the normal run of the mill I would not have a problem with him living with some bloke and wanting to keep it secret, but by his own admission he admits he was living with the bloke as a couple and renting rooms from him at the same time.

How the fuck could he not consider that to fall inot the scope of the parliamentry rgulations.

The truth is that rather than being deeply private people blah blah the real reason he wanted to keep his relationship secret was because if anyone found out about it he knew he would be be in the shit for claiming these expenses.

I don’t believe him, but lets just say for one moment he did not understand the regulations, but I think it is a bit of worry that somebody with such a poor comprehension of the written English should be Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

What is worse is Lord Ashdown saying that Mr Laws is ” Mr Integrity” and then bleating on to say that “This turns on the question of what is meant by a partnership in the rules for members’ expenses. That is not the public view of what a partnership is… Whether or not this infringed the rules because they infringed the term ‘partnership’ as it is meant in the rules is a matter for the parliamentary commissioner to decide on.” Well Lord Ashdown let this member of the public leave you in no doubt, that as far as I am concerned Mr Laws is a lying thieving git. He was shacked up with Mr Lundie and claimed money for renting rooms from him when he should not have done.

He has taken the piss and Lord Ashdown is compounding it by excusing criminal behavoiur.

Oh and by the way I do not consider being caught a personal tragedy, I would call the death of Mr Camerons young son or Mr Borwns new born baby personal tragedy.

May be Paddy pants down should retire as well as he has clearly lost the frigging plot.

As regular readers will know I don’t hold a very high regard for politicans and I am not a fan of Mr Camermoron. Not of him personally, but just of the fact that he has opposed a lot of things for the last few years but not really come up with too much in the way of policy of his own.

Time will tell, I mean who knows maybe this is the dawn of a whole new brave new political world.

Anyway be that as it may, I felt it a little unfair the other day when I read an article saying that the government had failed to deal with X problem.

To be fair its a little hard to see how the new cobolition could have done very much about anything in the short space of time they had been in office. What struck me as odd though was the response from the new minister which was something along the lines of ” The government has been working on this diligently with various agencies blah blah to do blah blah and will continue to do so in the future blah blah”

I think I would have said “Yeah so? The last goverment did do sweet FA because they were crap and that’s why the British public sort of gave them the tin tac and elected us”

Alas no such straight forward talking, just media speak.

The thing is, that this only serves to reinforce my jaundiced view, that not only do the politicians stick together, but the country is run hook line and sinker by Civil Servants. So whats the point of elections if you only change the name of the party but don’t change the government.

The other amazing thing about elections and government is that in a few months time you will not be able to find anyone who voted for the new government. In France for example every man and his dog hates Sarkozy and nobody admits voting for him, yet in the second round of the election he got over 53% of the vote, that’s about 19 million people. You would think you could find at least one of them

Mind you, being in opposition is a lot easier than being in government as the new PM is about to find out. When you are in opposition you can jaw about everything – a bit like me really – but you dont actually have to do anything. When you are head honcho you have to do or at east be seen to be doing. Talk is cheaper than action, but actions speak louder than any words.

Just for the record I don’t have any better idea of how democracy and government could be run, but I do know that I certainly would not want the job of being PM. In my view the fact that these people want the bloody job in the first place shows they are certifiable loons.

I just do not understand why anyone would want to have that amount of thankless grief and aggravation. Still at least you missus wouldn’t have to ask “Had a good day at work love” she will know before you get in because it will have been on the news all day.

At last I have a few spare moments for my stumpy little digits to tap the key board.

I am sorry for the prolonged absence, but this has been due to a variety of bureaucratic and administrative processes not to mention a recuperation process which was not entirely trouble free.

In novels the hero man of action knows no legal boundaries and lives a buccaneer lifestyle. Alas the things of stories. The reality is that there are tax forms, insurance papers, employers obligations and a whole host of other bollocks to tie one down. In short I am surprised that in the modern western world anyone has time to go out and kill deal with anyone and thus earn an honest(ish) crust.

At the end of November I had to go and see our accountants – yes we have accountants, after all we are an honest business, well as honest as the average politician, and so we have accountants, lawyers and business advisers. These are not always happy meetings as they try to make head and tail of some of our “essential expenses”.

Accountant ” Uncle Norman, who is Mr Glock and why did you need to pay him X on Y occasions”, but my favourite was when they questioned why we had sexual services in France down as an expense.

“What sexual services in France are you on about?” I asked the chubby faced youth, He snorted and said rather pompously “There are a number of entries for Body Amour, I presume that this is some kind of massage parlour or is lingerie you bought for some lady”

“Amour? ” I said racking my brains “That’s body amour you tit, look at who issued the bills” He snorted again ” But even so, it is a lot of money and why did it need to be replaced?”, “Because there were bullet holes in it, is that a good enough reason?” Although I skipped over the bit that I don’t actually like wearing it and frequently don’t, which with hindsight, may not have been my wisest move at times. Still you live and learn.

Still at least he did not ask about Messrs, Heckler, Koch and Browning! or the payment to the Happy Ending Massage Parlour in Thailand. Tee hee.

Anyway It may not come as a shock that we have since sacked our accountants and have changed a lot of things following the “lets get your blood pressure up” session with them and my little accident.

So I had a lengthy meeting with our solicitors who echoed my own concerns that we were in danger of contravening a plethora of UK laws and regulations. I have made no secret of the fact that I am on very good terms with a number of police officers in Special Branch or whatever they call themselves these days as they come to see me regularly when they get wind of my being employed in what might be refereed to as “Sensitive locations”. Two of them had come to visit me just after I had been shot and expressed concern that I could be a sitting duck for some whizz kid trying to make a name for himself.

The legal beagle was also very concerned and agreed with the plods that as things stood I was rather bare arsed.

The problem is that although private investigators are not licensed in the UK yet almost every other aspect of the security industry is. The other thing is that the jobs we do are not quite within the remit of most other similar companies.

Thus I went to see our business advisers in Yorkshire who are very good.

My Trip to Yorkshire was very productive and at after 2 hours of no nonsense chat and a bill for almost £4K I had a new entirely legal corporate structure -outside the UK – which is totally legal but free of licensing requirements and can operate anywhere in the word without any problems and without the need for accountants. Money well spent in my opinion.

Of course we always keep books and accounts, you have to make sure you are actually making money, but hopefully that’s the end of stupid meetings and justifying paying Mr Glock.

Our law bidding friends in Parliament have kept me amused over the months. I like the term “expenses scandal”, when we really mean thieving and deception. As I have already said we have to justify everything but they have been at this caper for years without anyone blinking an eye. what is worse is The standard defence seems to be “I was only doing what everyone else did” – a defence which did not carry much weight at the Nuremberg War Trials, but that was few years ago and clearly in the UK we have come round to thinking that if everyone else was doing naughtiness then that makes it OK.

The last few weeks of course have been livened up (NOT) by the election. I regret to say that I am not overly impressed with any of them and the words “fat” and “fire” spring to mind. Do anyone of these plonkers actually know anything about real life and the problems faced by the rank and file. I doubt it, but it is funny listening to them telling us how they will make it better and that they will change this that and the other.

Yeah right, and I will get to the dance the naked horizontal mambo with Lady Gaga.